Page 58 of Designed for Disaster

He hummed. “Not struggle, exactly. It’s more that I’ve realized after the fact that some of the women I dated weren’t in the relationship for the same things as me.”

“I’m not following. What were they after?”

“Well, there was this girl in college. Tessa. I thought we got along really well, and when we started dating, I was completely stoked. But then I found out she was actually just with me to get to Aiden.”

I put my burrito down to cover my mouth. “Oh my god, stop! No, she wasn’t.”

He nodded. “Aiden was one of the stars of our football team. It made him a big shot on campus. There were plenty of girls chasing him, and I guess she thought getting into his inner circle would put her ahead of the rest. We were at this party one night after a big game. The whole football team was celebrating a huge win. I left her alone for five minutes to go get us drinks, and I came back to find her trying to seduce Aiden.”

I gasped. “What happened?”

“Aiden totally shut her down.” He laughed. “I’ve never seen the guy move away from someone so quickly. Honestly, it was a dumb move on her part. Anyone who knows Aiden at all knows that he’d never in a million years betray a friend. Dating me guaranteed that Aiden wouldn’t lay a finger on her. But it was still a rough experience.”

“That really sucks.” I reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“Eh, she was still better than Katie. She’s a model; we dated back when I was still running BeautiTool. Turned out she was more interested in landing the spokesmodel gig than being with me.”

I could only stare at him in shock. “You sound so…calm,” I said, voicing what was bugging me about this. “Aren’t you angry about what they did?”

He shrugged. “Not especially. I was pretty pissed off when it happened, but it was a long time ago. What good would it do me to keep dwelling on it?”

I couldn’t make up my mind if that was healthy of him or just really coldblooded. How could he not care that these women had been using him?

“I don’t understand how you keep ending up in those kinds of relationships.”

“It really only happened twice,” he pointed out. “I figured it out after that.”

“Figured what out?” I asked, an uneasiness growing in the pit of my stomach.

“That people go into relationships with an idea of what they want to get out of it,” he said matter-of-factly. “And that’s not a bad thing—as long as both partners are on the same page. The problem with Tessa and Katie was that they tried to be underhanded about it. If they’d been straight with me from the start about what they were after, I’d have known they weren’t in it for the long haul, and I wouldn’t have gotten invested. Since then, I’ve kept things pretty casual. It’s cleaner that way.”

Was that how he saw the relationship between us? As something casual? No, we wouldn’t be out having breakfast together if thatwas the case. So whatwasgoing on here, from his perspective? Part of me wanted to ask—but the rest of me felt like now wasn’t the time. Trent and I had only spent one night together. There was no rush—we had all the time in the world to figure out what this meant for the two of us.

He smiled at me, offering me some more avocado.

I smirked, shaking my head. Trent returned his attention to his newspaper.

“Hey, look at this,” Trent said, flipping the newspaper around. “We made the society page.”

“What?”

I stared down at a photograph from the rooftop club last night. The paparazzi must have been there, sneaking photographs of Kyle Landing and his entourage. Trent and I had both ended up in the background of the shot. I don’t remember seeing anyone taking photos, but I’d been totally absorbed by Trent.

“The paper even lists you by name,” I teased, reading the caption beneath the photo.

He rolled his eyes. “Wonderful.”

“You’re famous. If this sustainable line flops, at least you can always fall back on that.” I laughed at the grumpy look on his face, and as I focused on that, Ialmostforgot to worry about whether this was a relationship I could count on.

17

NATASHA

“Do I look okay?” Stacy asked me for the third time in as many minutes.

“You look great.” And she did, dolled up in her signature bright colors and perfectly mismatched patterns.

“I’m so nervous,” she said, wringing her hands together. “I don’t know why. We’ve been chatting every day.”

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